Liquid Gold Guards

[drewkitty]

In a World Without Oil:

. . . corporations will defend themselves.



Now that the patch is off my eye and the only evidence of my adventures on Sunday is shaved eyebrows and a healing bandage on my right forearm, I can tell what I've been doing in such a hurry since Sunday.

I mentioned that I'm a manager for a guard company. We received three emergency service orders on Monday morning for over four thousand hours per week of security guards. That's over one hundred new personnel to hire and place. NOW.

Qualified guards do not grow on trees. Until you offer 25% above the prevailing wage. Then they come out of the woodwork in droves. Mixed with six times as many unqualified, unreliable, and/or actually dangerous.

So someone has to wade through six hundred applicants. Someone meaning me. Then we run backgrounds, drug tests, orient, and train.

Where are these guards going?

-- About seventy gasoline stations, to control gas nozzles. That's right, we've been promoted to gas station attendants! Random coverage, every station gets a guard two or three days a week. Logistics nightmare.

-- Three guards all the time (504 hours of service) to control access to the regional gasoline storage facility. You know, where the tankers fill up.

-- Plus a thousand hours of service (about 25 guards) to protect the corporate headquarters of a fairly well known oil company. The client specified "unarmed" and then "ex-military preferred, with handcuffs and pepper spray training within 21 days of hire." Great.

So now you know why I've been so busy. Yes, gas prices have gone up. Yes, operating costs have gone up and crime has gone up. That makes guards more affordable. With gasoline at almost $7 per gallon, a gasoline theft becomes big money -- and a tanker theft, even bigger money.

For sure the police are in no position to pick up the slack. We can, and will.

Did I mention that you get to pay for it?

Comments

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

As a side note, Dueltrack (a Car Wars supplement that introduced gas engines to the game), predicted that by 2034, gas prices would be at $40 a gallon.

Part of me thinks that 7 dollars a gallon is conservative. However, I've not been keeping track of the prices that the website has been keeping. I would have probably made that price at least 11.